Jef Guy. The Maphumulo Uprising: War, Law and Ritual in the Zulu Rebellion. Scottsville: University of KwaZulu Natal Press, 2005. xii + 276 pp. $34.95, paper, ISBN 978-1-86914-048-9.
Reviewed by Bradley Skelcher
Published on H-SAfrica (August, 2007)
Shortly after his release from prison in Febru‐ country thereafter. Many claim it to have been the ary 1990, Nelson Mandela delivered a speech in frst resistance to apartheid in South Africa. Durban about apartheid in Natal. In the speech, Jef Guy has authored numerous works on the he made reference to a protest against a poll tax history of what is now called KwaZulu-Natal in in 1906 called the Bhambatha Rebellion. "The South Africa, including The Destruction of the Zulu people, led by Chief Bhambatha [kaMancin‐ Zulu Kingdom: The Civil War, 1879-1884 (1994) za], refused to bow their proud heads and a pow‐ and The Heretic: A Study of the Life of John erful spirit of resistance developed, which, like William Colenso, 1814-1883(1983). He followed the battle of Isandlwana, inspired generations of with a book about Colenso's daughter titled The South Africans."[1] Isandlwana was the location View Across the River: Harriette Colenso and the where King Cetshwayo kaMapande of the Zulus Zulu Struggle against Imperialism (2002). Most re‐ defeated the British army during the 1879 Anglo- cently, Guy wrote Remembering the Rebellion: The Zulu War. In 2006, South Africa commemorated Zulu Uprising of 1906 (2007). With the release of the one hundredth anniversary of the Bhambatha The Maphumulo Uprising, Guy continues his ex‐ Rebellion of 1906. At the tenth anniversary cele‐ ploration of British colonialism and its impact on bration of the adoption of the South African Con‐ South African history, in particular Natal Colony stitution in Cape Town on May 8, 2006, President and Zululand. As he as done with his previous Thabo Mbeki referred to the Bhambatha Rebel‐ works, Guy has accomplished an informative his‐ lion and how it inspired the people to fght colo‐ tory chronicling the expansion of the British Natal nialism and then apartheid that followed.[2] The Colony into Zululand and its solidifcation of colo‐ Bhambatha Rebellion evokes strong images of the nial rule in southern Africa while making it enjoy‐ long struggle against oppression in South Africa able to read in his forceful writing style. His grip‐ and has been invoked by political leaders in the ping method of writing compels the reader to en‐ gage in his works. H-Net Reviews
The Bhambatha Rebellion in the newly Shaka, their distant cousins, the Qwabe, nearly merged Natal Colony and Zululand occurred fol‐ disappeared as a people. By the end of the nine‐ lowing the announcement of a poll tax, or a tax teenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, levied against all men who did not pay a hut tax. the Qwabe had reconstituted themselves into This tax directly challenged the traditional patri‐ small homesteads with women and children as archal authority of Zulus or at least what re‐ the producers of wealth with patriarchs control‐ mained of it after the British conquest of Zululand ling the means of production and benefciaries of in the late nineteenth century. By direct taxation these units. of young men not yet married, the British colonial The other fgure in the rebellion was Ndlovu authorities "hastened the breaking up of the patri‐ kaThimuni Zulu of Nodunga chiefdom lying in archal rural homestead, the rupture of kinship valleys along the Otimati and Timati streams. His links, and the further fragmentation of African grandfather fell from grace with King Dingane re‐ communal life" (pp. 21-22). Guy probes more garding Boer intrusions into Zululand in 1838. deeply into the efect of the poll tax and surmises, Theophilus Shepstone, Secretary of Native Afairs, "it disrupted the spiritual forces that linked sons "recognized him as a colonial chief" thereby ex‐ to their fathers and their fathers' fathers whose ploiting "divisions amongst chiefs" and catering to shades watched over the homestead" (p. 22). their "desire for authority" (p. 43). The poll tax struck at the basis of spiritual life In June 1906, the protest against the poll tax among the Zulus, which in essence strikes at the turned violent with the killing and mutilations of core of Guy's work. He not only probes the materi‐ Adolph Sangereid, Albert Powell, and Oliver Veal. al impact of the poll tax, but also the spiritual con‐ Following militia and military attacks and the sequences of British colonial actions. The Bham‐ killing of 1,500 people accused of rebellion in the batha Rebellion was as much a spiritual action as Maphumulo and Lower Thukela divisions, the it was a physical response to British imperial au‐ government began arresting people accused of in‐ thority. Many saw the imposition of the poll tax as surrection and murder. The government focused a direct challenge to their ancestors' power. Histo‐ its attention on two inkosi accused of leading the rian Sean Redding sees the rebellion against the rebellion. Meseni and Ndlovi were accused of poll tax as "placating the ancestors" that suggests armed insurrection with the "intention of over‐ their "ancestors strongly supported their resis‐ throwing the government" and of murder (pp. tance and would allow them to prevail."[3] 111-112). In all, the government accused twenty- The focus of the book, however, is not Bham‐ one men of murder. All were found guilty and batha kaMancinza, inkosi or chief of the Zondi sentenced to death. However, the government within the Mvoti division of the Natal Colony. It is commuted all but fve of the death sentences to not the story of Dinuzulu kaCetshwayo ka prison sentences. According to Guy, Ndlovu and Mpande, recognized by the Zulus as descendant of Meseni were chiefs and responsible for their peo‐ legendary Shaka kaSenzangakhona and their ple's actions. Guy, however, characterizes them as king; he paid the poll tax. Rather, Guy writes "clever men, with a lifetime's experience in adju‐ about a more localized rebellion in the Maphumu‐ dication ... who covered their tracks, literally and lo and Lower Thukela divisions to the north and metaphorically" (p. 239). Both were sent to St. He‐ west of Durban on the border of Natal and Zulu‐ lena rather than to the gallows, but eventually land. It was here that the rebellion spread bring‐ were released and exiled. Dinuzulu, too, was ar‐ ing inkosi Meseni kaMusi of the Qwabe from the rested, imprisoned, and later exiled. In the end, Mvoti valley. During the rise of the Zulu under British colonial authority in all of its brutality was
2 H-Net Reviews preserved and expanded throughout Natal and patriarchal system that existed among the native Zululand. The rebellion, nonetheless, did hasten South Africans in Natal and Zululand. the creation of the Union of South Africa in 1910, Guy, in many respects, agrees with Marks's which was responsible for releasing Dinuzulu earlier work. He sees the rebellion as a response from prison, but exiling him from his homeland. to colonial attempts to break patriarchal rule re‐ In fairness, the new government also released the placing it with a modern capitalistic system based others imprisoned at St. Helena; they, too, were upon wage labor. This was an attempt by colonial not allowed to return to their homelands. The re‐ authorities to separate indigenous South Africans bellion also accelerated the institutionalization of from their homelands, forcing them into the segregation with passage of the Natives Land Act wage-labor system. In an act of desperation, in 1913. Bhambatha and his followers protested. Faced Guy ofers the latest work on the Rebellion, with violent responses from colonial authorities, which has garnered little interest among scholars the rebellion responded in-kind. Out-gunned, the in the history of South Africa. Walter Bosman and rebels turned to traditional methods of warfare James Stuart were two of the earliest who wrote rooted in war medicine and native religion. Other about the Bhambatha Rebellion with the former colonized people resorted to similar tactics, such publishing The Natal Rebellion in 1907 and the as the Native Americans in their resistance to latter publishing A History of the Zulu Rebellion American expansion across the continent and the of 1906 and Dinizulu's Arrest and Expatriation in Chinese resistance against European hegemony in 1913. A contemporary, J. L. Dube, published a the Boxer Rebellion. newspaper in Durban named Ilanga Lase Natal in Guy describes the Bhambatha Rebellion by isiZulu. Dube published accounts of the Bhambat‐ retelling the historical events through meticulous ha Rebellion with all the subtleties of the lan‐ archive research and exploration of secondary guage often misunderstood by South African au‐ works. He also provides the reader with a detailed thors writing in English or Afrikaans. Both account of the court proceedings using court Bosman and Stuart described a rebellion of records and newspaper accounts, all of which re‐ treacherous leaders who opposed progressive at‐ veal the spiritual aspects of the rebellion yet to be tempts by the British to move the native South signifcantly explored by other authors. The sub‐ Africans into modernity. Shula Marks followed ject would beneft from a comparative approach over ffty years later with Reluctant Rebellion: that explored what was happening in other The 1906-1908 Disturbances in Natal (1970). British colonies at the time. In all, however, this Marks describes a desperate situation in which work is an important contribution to the under‐ native South Africans faced economic destitution standing of colonialism in South Africa and is rec‐ because of infected cattle and the aftermath of the ommended to any scholar interested in the socio- Anglo-Boer War that devastated much of the re‐ economic and political history of Natal and Zulu‐ gion. Compelled to pay a poll tax, many rose up in land in South Africa. protest knowing the impossibility of paying it. Notes More recently, Benedict Carton wrote Blood from Your Children: The Colonial Origins of Genera‐ [1]. Nelson Mandela, "Address to Rally in Dur‐ tional Confict in South Africa (2000). Carton takes ban," February 25, 1990, http://www.anc.org.za/ the position that the rebellion was not aimed at ancdocs/history/mandela/1990/sp900225-1.html . colonial rule. Rather, it was between young native [2]. Thabo Mbeki, "Address of the President of South Africans and the older generation. Both South Africa" at a Joint Sitting of the Houses of young men and women were rebelling against the Parliament on the Occasion of the 10th Anniver‐
3 H-Net Reviews sary of the Adoption of the Constitution of the Re‐ public of South Africa, Cape Town, May 8, 2006, http://www.dfa.gov.za/docs/speeches/2006/ mbek0508.htm . [3]. Sean Redding, "A Blood-Stained Tax: Poll Tax and the Bambatha Rebellion in South Africa," African Studies Review 43, no. 2 (September 2000), 29.
If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the network, at https://networks.h-net.org/h-safrica
Citation: Bradley Skelcher. Review of Guy, Jef. The Maphumulo Uprising: War, Law and Ritual in the Zulu Rebellion. H-SAfrica, H-Net Reviews. August, 2007.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=13482
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
4